Side Chapter — Meanwhile at the Dungeon

Days had passed since Keima and the others left the dungeon. Goren’s dungeon, the [Cave of Greed], was busier than ever.

“Keima and Gozou’s parties aren’t here! Now’s our time to make some dough!”

“The town chief always just wanders in once a week and takes all the treasure somehow... But now that he’s gone, the loot’s ripe for the picking!”

Thus thought a surprising number of adventurers, who all formed a party together and ventured into the dungeon. To be honest, they had already been forming parties and exploring the dungeon for quite some time, but this time they were particularly motivated.

After some exploring, they found a treasure chest set on the floor of the labyrinth area. Most treasure chests in this dungeon just appeared there. They contained their enthusiasm and opened the box while keeping an eye on their surroundings.

“Whoa, some high class wine! We’ve got a whole bottle for ourselves!”

“Holy crap... Usually only Keima or Gozou can get this stuff.”

“Yeah, the town chief grabs tons of the stuff and gives it all to the bar.”

They did feel annoyed at them keeping all the good loot for themselves. But they were grateful that Keima wasn’t too into alcohol and just sold it all to the bar, where they could drink it if they had the money for it. But prices were high, as you would expect for such a rare drink, and well, they couldn’t help but feel envious about how much money Keima was making by selling huge stores of the stuff.

But then, some Goblins appeared. It was a party of five of them. Something cut audibly through the air before anyone could blink. Thunk! An arrow stabbed into the ground by the adventurers’ feet.

“Hey! They’ve got a Goblin Archer! Protect the wine with your lives!”

“More of them?! How many fights has this been?! At least it’s just Goblins this time...!”

“I see three Clay Golems behind ’em. Should we fight? Maybe we should run.”

“Seriously! Crap, these are some lucky Goblins. We’d have a hard time if the Golems jumped in mid fight. Let’s get out of here.”

They decided to run and fled the dungeon together at the drop of a hat.

Incidentally, the Goblins in the dungeon could be split into two types. First were the small-fry Goblins. Second were the armed Goblins. It was simple to tell them apart, for obvious reasons. Armed Goblins had some kind of weapon in hand and often formed parties. The quality of the weapons were bad, and their corpses were the same as small-fry Goblins, so it was safe to say there was nothing good about them. That said, inexperienced adventurers could lose to them in a snap. Even C-Rank adventurers might find themselves in a bad situation where the best option is just to run away.

Of course, it was pretty easy to run away from Goblins, so few people actually died to armed ones. Rumor had it that the Goblins didn’t give chase since they were cautious about traps. Either way, they weren’t an opponent to treat lightly. Which is why the adventurers managed to run away safely.

“Haah, haaah... There, we got away. Anyway, why the hell are there so many monsters? I like all the treasure chests, but this just isn’t right.”

“Might be a paradigm shift...? Though it might just be a coincidence that we’re... Oh!”

“Huh? Didja think of something?”

“...Maybe it’s ’cause Keima and Gozou are gone?”

Indeed. Keima and Gozou hadn’t just been clearing out the items. They had been clearing out the monsters too. The adventurers, realizing once again how incredible the two of them were, nodded to themselves.

“Wait a second,” murmured one. “I’m pretty sure Gozou didn’t hunt too many monsters.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen Gozou delivering body parts and extermination counts before, but he didn’t have much more than either of us.”

Gozou delivered monster body parts and extermination counts to the Adventurer’s Guild just like a proper adventurer should. Extermination quests were often a stable source of income, so many adventurers did both of them.

“...What about the town chief?”

“...I’ve never seen him do either.”

That said, Keima was pretty lazy about that kind of thing. It was hard to say just how many monsters he was actually hunting.

“Does that mean he’s not hunting at all?”

“Nah, the opposite. The town chief’s running the town, right? That means he’s on the side of people paying for extermination quests. He doesn’t need to bother with reports. That’d just be adding on more work when he could just be paying himself instead.”

In other words, it was safe to say Keima was hunting all the monsters that Gozou wasn’t. Considering how much money Gozou usually spent... Keima would be single-handedly exterminating most of the monsters they were encountering. It didn’t take long for them to reach the shocking truth.

“What the hell...? So we’ve always been going into the dungeon after Keima’s picked it clean of monsters?”

“Damn. The town chief’s somethin’ else for sure.”

Just how many monsters did he hunt during his once a week dungeon dive? Not to mention that he always went in solo, like he was going for a casual walk. Whiiich meant he was fighting all those monsters alone. Where a full party of adventurers would run, Keima would casually stay and fight like he was walking through his home’s garden. It was hard to imagine that considering how apathetic he usually looked, but now that they thought about it, Wataru the Hero had talked about how he had never managed to beat Keima. That surely meant he was strong enough to beat a group of Goblins and Golems without even thinking about it.

“...Guess that explains how he gets all the wine to himself.”

“Really, it’s thanks to him that we can safely buy it at the bar when we want to drink some...”

“Yeah, we’re way out of our league here. We can’t hold a candle to him.”

And so, Keima’s reputation grew stronger while he wasn’t even aware of it.

＊ ＊ ＊

Within the Master Room, Rei was receiving a report from Neruneh and Elulu.

“And sooo, my research is doing just greaaat.”

“I’ve been spawning more monsters to compensate for the supposed amount that Keima and Niku would be hunting if they were here. Have I been going too far?”

“No, you’ve been doing perfect. Keep it up, both of you.”

As she sat in the seat usually reserved for Keima and flicked through the menu while watching the monitor, Rei couldn’t help but grin. Being entrusted with managing the dungeon while her master was gone filled her heart with joy.

“Bwahaha! I am the one who protects the dungeon while Master is gone! I, Rei the Vampire! Bwahahaha! I shall make the dungeon a perfect recreation of how it is while he is here!” she declared, unleashing her storm of emotions before catching her breath. Perfect. She calmed down.

Kinue, who had been standing next to Rei waiting for that, patted her shoulder. “Rei. Do you have a moment?”

“Hm? What is it, Kinue?”

“Do you really think this is a perfect recreation?” asked Kinue, a little unsatisfied. But Rei was unfazed by the nitpicking. She knew that, unlike Keima, she wasn’t capable of doing perfect work. Rei was anything but narcissistic. She had simply been having a little fun a second ago, so she embraced Kinue’s protests.

“Do you have any criticism? I am all ears.”

“Very well, then. Do you truly think so poorly of Master?”

A jolt ran through Rei. Kinue was, in short, trying to say that if Keima were dungeon diving as an adventurer, he would be slaughtering far more monsters than they were adding. She wasn’t going far enough, and Rei understood that instantly. She’s smart!

“You’re right, Kinue! Elulu, add even more monsters! About twice as many!”

“Er, um, okay. Understood!”

“This is perfeeect. Let’s kill all the adventureeers...! But actually that would be a problem, so beat the adventureeers half-dead!”

“Oh? Did he say we could kill half of them?”

“Rei, beating someone half-dead is to hurt them badly, but not enough to kill them.”

And so, the difficulty level of the dungeon rose with each passing day. The result was Keima’s reputation improving, so one could say Rei was indeed accomplishing her goals. Though whether Keima wanted that was an entirely different story.